Shortening URLs Shortchanges Branding
I realize the uselessness in going up against the Twitter tsunami, especially when said wave also suggests changing your relationship with Google. But like Canute the Great, King of England, Denmark, and Norway (995-1035), I shall try to hold back the sea anyway, because my point is pointy.
You have spent a lot of effort (read: time, money, thought) to establish your brand and to make your url known. You include it on everything. But then you go and use TinyUrl.com or BudUrl.com — and you get this sort of url to use to spread the word about your site’s information:
A few of our clients use these shortened URLs. One, Elizabeth Yarnell, is very marketing-savvy (she even has a blog devoted to online publicity) and she loves this. It lets her post more descriptive text in her Twitter and Facebook status postings. “There is a character count to consider,” Elizabeth points out, “and besides, it’s free. But most valuable is the tracking mechanism that BudURL.com offers. I can see which links are drawing a response.”
So, she knows where to devote her next burst of marketing energy. Good info.
And the Twitterization of the internet does command a method for shorter URLs.
HOWEVER, use of shortened URLs removes the opportunity to imprint your own URL in in your viewer’s minds. A basic tenet of advertising and branding includes not just the click-thru and conversion goal, but just the sight and reading. That has value. See it enough and the brand –or in this case, the URL– seeps into memory. Your viewer might not click over this time. They might not next time or the time after. They might never click over. But after seeing your URL over and over, they might eventually find their way there on their own, simply riding on the familiarity of it.
And regardless of how your audience makes their way to your site, if they have seen your URL over and over, when they do finally arrive, their comfort level will foster a more favorable response than if they are seeing it for the first time — which they are if you have been posting shortened URLs instead of your actual domain name.
Furthermore, there is a bucketload of ominous-looking code attached to BudURL. Look at this:
UntrustedLink
<h3 class=”UIIntentionalStory_Message”><a onmousedown=”UntrustedLink.bootstrap($(this), "25236cabe3dcbeafa769854b6345be56", event)” rel=”nofollow” href=”http://budurl.com/ta49″ target=”_blank”>http://budurl.com/ta49</a></h3>
That just looks scary. (Note, we stripped all this out of the link at the start of this post.) Plus, according to this boingboing article, shortened URLs have all sorts of additional liability attached, including assisting spammers, undermining googlejuice, and exposing users to security vulnerabilities.
At Wax we always (try to) post pithy or numerically coded permalinks, such as:
http://waxcreative.com/blog/2009/03/home-sweet-home
or http://waxcreative.com/blog/2009/01/smart-woman
Longer, yes, and lacking the tracking mechanism of BudUrl, but putting our company name out there. Again, the people who see this may decide against clicking over and over. But sooner or later, the familiarity will have seeped in.
Also, consider this related aside: if you are using gmail (or yahoo.com, etc) for business, such as [email protected] (or yahoo.com, etc), then you are also missing an opportunity to display your domain. Why aren’t you using [email protected]? I asked this to several people, and the responses were almost all essentially the same: “I know, I know, I will get to it,” and “I don’t know how to get that email into Outlook,” and my favorite, if only for its bald honesty: “I am too lazy to change.”
I don’t think that I am going to stop this URL shortening trend, but the point is pointy, and worthy of discussion.
And no, the irony of a long blog post about shortening things is not lost, thankyouverymuch.
10 thoughts on “Shortening URLs Shortchanges Branding”
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I always wondered what that bud thing was. It doesn’t really bother me, but I guess I am not seeing the website name either. This post is a little over my head, but I don’t have my own website. I just like going to them!
When I use TinyUrl, I use the custom feature so that the link uses “marycastillo” and thus saves me from complete anonymity. The urls are bit longer than the automated tinyURLs but it does the job.
Fabulous info Mary! Thanks!
That’s a brilliant solution, Mary.
Why do I use gmail? Because most hosts with a typical mailing system (horde or whatever else) ends up getting a ton of spam!
You can pop them to whatever server you want but you’ll still receive all that spam. And I’ve yet to find a way to fight it off. Any secrets on that, please share!
Your point is, indeed, pointy – what is the use of having an excellent domain name if you just go circumventing it all the time?
I like Mary’s solution of customizing, as well. Mainly I post links on boards and embed the URL in text, but that has the same effect – circumventing the most excellent domain name. I’m going to have to think about that some.
E
Excellent information. I hadn’t considered using my email address to put my ‘brand’ out, but it does make sense.
I try to make it a point to have my website readable as well as clickable. I know may people who won’t click the shortened links because they want to know where they are going before they click.
Your branding point is right on, Em, and you definitely want people to recognize and be comfortable with your domain. I, too, don’t understand why people with their own URL don’t offer an email addy that points to their site — what a lost opportunity for branding!
However, there are a couple of points I’d like to make in defense of using shortened URLS, in addition to the ones you quoted me saying above.
First, I ONLY advocate using shortened URLs in places like Twitter or Facebook status updates. I would be unlikely to use them in a comment on a blog post, or a posting on a board, or even in my own blogs; those spots have room for a longer URL, and I want people to see my domain written there, as well as the link.
Second, the reason I like to use them on Twitter, for example, is due in part to the frequency I tweet. If people see my domain name too frequently, they will begin to see me as too self-serving rather than a fellow contributor to the community. With a shrunken URL, I *could* be pointing my followers anywhere on the web, not just to my own sites. I’m adding VALUE to the conversation and not being a blatant marketer. Besides, my Twitter handle is my name (twitter.com/ElizabethYarnel), and gets seen with every tweet anyway.
Mary brought up customizing the tiny url, which is an interesting option to consider, though not one I’ll likely take soon for my Tweets. In the beginning of my Twittering days I used to only refer to the home page (www.EffortlessEating.com, for example), and spell it out every time, but then I realized the importance of linking to the correct post so as to not frustrate your followers. It’s also hard for someone to retweet a link that long.
I would NEVER use shortened links on my own website pages — it’s a much better SEO practice to use descriptive text links that Google can understand and follow.
Thanks for starting this conversation, Emily! Good stuff to toss around.
Excellent points, Elizabeth. Especially about being part of a conversation in a community setting.